Being able to maintain and care for removable plastic dental appliances is an ever important issue, especially when the appliance is intended for cosmetic purposes. If not for the specially formulated materials of the present invention, the patients would use toothbrush and toothpaste meant for natural dentition, they will damage the appliance and make it rough and dull instead of smooth and shiny.
Maintaining removal dental esthetic appliances other than partial dentures has not been widely addressed. The market for cosmetic and other removable dental appliances made of synthetic resin is a growing field, and thus the need for the present invention.
In the past, there have been a number of dental care kits available. For example, a a web site to dental maet.com there is a “Removable Appliance Care Kit” which contains packets of denture cleanser, a denture brush, a sonic denture bath, a book of instructions and a carrying tote. At web site dentakit.com, an “Orthodontic Headgear and Dental Appliance Bag” is a nylon pouch that can carry orthodontic headgear, facebows, and other large removable dental appliances.
At dentakit.com, a “SonicBrite Retainer Cleaning Kit” is shown. The product includes a heavy-duty portable sonic cleaning bath with a built-in timer, a bottle of professional-strength cleaning powder, a measuring spoon, and instructions. In U.S. Pat. No. 6,715,603 Uribe discloses a Dental Care Kit. The invention is a small device, with size analogous to a credit card that contains a supply of dental floss and a dental cleaning implement. The components of Uribe's kit can be either one-use or multi-use. Denture cleansers are by no means new; the following two US patents feature denture cleansers that are analogous to the effervescent powder that is part of the instant kit.
The prior art, as described above is not comparable to the instant invention. Applicants' invention is a kit whose components deal with both keeping a patient's natural teeth healthy as well as keeping a removable acetal appliance in good appearance and condition.